


we are twists of nature, yet natural things

by YoricksTalkingSkull



Category: Holby City
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Bisexual Sea Witch Serena, Dark Fairy Tale Elements, Dubious Things Happen In Dark Caves, Explicit Sexual Content, Extramarital Affairs, F/F, Lesbian Mermaid Bernie Wolfe, Magical Realism, Sexuality Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-01
Updated: 2017-05-01
Packaged: 2018-10-26 12:01:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10786371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YoricksTalkingSkull/pseuds/YoricksTalkingSkull
Summary: The sea witch is visited one night by a mermaid. She comes desiring skin, legs, a human form. Months later, the mermaid returns, asking Serena how to please her husband, how to be a good wife. The witch, in the darkness of her cave, shows her how.Little Mermaid, Danish retelling.





	we are twists of nature, yet natural things

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to insomnia and the masterpiece that is Emma Donoghue’s Kissing the Witch.

The mermaid comes to her, as if from a dream.

She rises, siren-like, out of the waters of the great green lagoon.

Never before, in all her years of healings, of charms and incantations, had the sea witch seen a creature of her kind seek counsel. For magical beings, they had power of their own. They did not call upon one another. Yet here she was, full in flesh and form, shaking.

‘Are you there?’ the mermaid whispers.

The witch pinches at the bridge of her nose, exhales. 'Which part of the title 'recluse sea witch' are you struggling to understand?'

The mermaid smiles. 'No intermittent contact with the outside world, I take it?'

'Define "intermittent."'

'Moments in the light, better known as the sun.'

 'Strange,’ the witch says, ‘I don't take it you're a philosopher.'

'No,' the mermaid admits, ‘I’m not.'

‘Well, no use in prolonging things,’ the witch says. ‘Mind telling me why we’re meeting up like this?’

The mermaid says nothing, tries to get a glimpse of where the witch hides.

‘Or,’ the witch tries, ‘what you have to offer me, in terms of payment?’

‘Myself,’ the mermaid says.

The answer is given without hesitation, and with so much conviction, that the witch has to give pause. Still obscured, the witch’s eyes trace the mermaid’s body, which appears opaque and luminous, a part of the very sea itself. Her emerald tail flickers in the semi-darkness, bold and incandescent. Her chest, exposed, is muscular, heaving.

The witch clears her throat. 'Tell me what you desire.’

‘Who says I want anything?’ the mermaid asks.

The witch clicks her tongue. ‘Wanting a dalliance with town hellion hardly seems likely.’

‘Well, if—if I’m honest,’ the mermaid says, face flushing. ‘There is something… something I want.’

‘Out with it,' the witch snaps.

‘I need skin,’ Bernie divulges, ‘I need a body, I need legs, I—’

‘What—' the witch asks, eyeing the mermaid, '—would you need legs for?’

‘I need them,’ Bernie says, ‘to live on land.’

The witch appraises her skeptically. ‘I can give you legs, only if you aren’t running from something.’

‘I’m not,’ the mermaid lies.

‘Well, that rather settles it then,’ the witch says, giving the mermaid a way out of her lie, a chance she did not take. ‘I will grant your wish, but for a price.’

‘Name it,’ the mermaid says.

'I need...’ The witch's voice trails. Her black eyes follow the mermaid's hair, from its roots to its tips, to the place where it splays across her collar bones, her ribcage, her thin, bird-like neck. 

'Hair,' the witch finally says. 

'Hair?'

'Yes. _Your_ hair.'

‘What shall I do?’ Bernie asks.

‘Lie down,’ the witch murmurs. ‘This will only take a moment.’

…

‘Keep your eyes closed,’ the witch instructs. 'Or the spell won't work.'

The mermaid lies down, pulls her hair out from underneath her back.

'Look at you,' the witch says, as the mermaid splays out her hair.

‘What about me?’ the mermaid asks.

‘Tense,’ the witch says. ‘Could rest the foundations of castles on those stiff shoulders of yours.’

‘Ah, well—’ Bernie breathes. ‘I’ve been told that about my body before.’

At this, the witch gives pause. ‘Let's be entirely clear: despite what they say about me in the kingdom of the sea and land, I would never harm you. Is that understood?'

Bernie nods. Still with eyes closed, she listens as the witch sharpens her shears, metal grating against a stone.

'Shall I relieve you then?' the witch asks, ‘before I cut your hair?’

'R-relieve me?’

‘Shall I undo the stiffness in your back?’

The mermaid deliberates, nods.

‘Then lie on your chest,' the witch says.

The mermaid does as she's told. The witch clambers over her body, kneeling at the mermaid's hips. When she presses her hands into Bernie’s bare back, the mermaid’s nostrils are invaded with the scent of the sea, of smoke. She feels the witch's breath come against her neck. Her muscles loosen and she lets out a sigh as the witch's hands alternate between caress and rougher ministrations.

Bernie buries her slackened jaw into the sand.

It is then the witch takes up her shears, and cuts.

…

‘Finished,’ the witch says.

Bernie opens her eyes slowly, to find that as the witch cut her hair, she also cast her spell. For the mermaid no longer had a fish’s tail, but the legs of a human. Bernie cannot help but run her fingertips against her legs, the seemingly endless length of them. She halts when she comes to something new: flesh, like a flower, at her centre.

‘Touch’ the witch instructs.

But Bernie feels humiliation at her nakedness, her body, at being held by the witch, who was now holding her from behind, her face still obscured from her view.

‘Best to take pleasure in it,’ the witch says, tone low. ‘Not shame.’

‘Never quite got used to the old one,’ Bernie admits. ‘My old body, that is.’

‘Pity,’ the witch says.

Bernie wrinkles her eyebrows, forces out deliberated words.

'Can you show me?' she asks.

The witch, startled by Bernie's frankness, takes a moment's pause. Still holding her from behind, the witch decides to take up her hand, slowly.

'Is this what you wish for?' the witch asks.

Bernie, without looking back to see the witch's face, takes her hand.

When she does, the witch leads Bernie's hand back to her centre, and when she touches the place, on herself, bliss replaces embarrassment. When her hands stroke at the folds of her flesh, her head and free hand reflexively fall back onto the witch's neck. The witch whispers into Bernie's neck, tells her how to take pleasure in herself, how to caress her own breasts, move in and out of her centre; how to embrace the ecstasy, as it comes in waves. She leads her to the very edge of it, her collapse into pleasure, until she cries out. She falls into the witch, formless.

‘Didn't take much instruction,' the witch says, holding her.

At the sound of the witch's voice, the mermaid realises, in horror, she has broken her promise. She has looked upon the witch.

Bernie lets out a small, startled, _‘oh.’_

For the woman who holds her in her arms is of no natural beauty. The witch’s face—carved out with a hollow darkness around the eyes—whispers years of solitude. Her eyes themselves are black, endlessly so, yet somehow they manage to flicker with a fire of their own, two glints of pure gold. The witch’s hair is savagely chopped—brown, strewn with veins of grey. In her hair are woven flowers: delicate, dead, black. The witch’s clothes are composed of what appear to be fisherman’s nets, the dark sails of ships, sunk long ago.

‘Not what you were expecting?' the witch asks.

The witch possesses sly, crafty lips; lips that could plan a shipwreck. She smiles down at the mermaid with them.

Bernie begins to speak, but her words were lost to her. They fall away, float up to rest somewhere in the endless cave, the sparkling green waters.

‘Your name?’ Bernie finally asks.

‘Serena,’ says the sea witch.

‘You are very beautiful, Serena,’ says Bernie. 

The witch says nothing of it, smiles her shipwreck smile. ‘The man you did this for, is he worth the price you paid?’

‘How do you know it was for a man?’ Bernie asks.

‘It always is,’ the witch replies. And before raking her eyes over Bernie’s body one last time, she adds, ‘which is why I suggest we get you some clothes at your nearest convenience.’

…

The sea witch spends most of her days alone following the arrival of the mermaid. Save a few nights with girls from the town, to satiate— what she acknowledges—was becoming the need for hands, lips, and teeth. But ones that were softer, kinder somehow. 

 

These women were often wanting better bodies, wanting better voices, yet thinking nothing of the substance of these things. They wish to change, but only their bodies, their voices, what was said and unsaid. They spoke to her of the men they love, and most of the time, the sea witch finds that what they want is not their own freedom or pleasure. But to the lovers, they seek their own punishment. A punishment she knows how to deliver.

She leads them to her bed; she shows them the empty love they believe in.

 _Offer up what you love for a better body_ , the witch tells one woman, as she sucks at her breast, teeth teasing, tearing the pink flesh of her nipple. _Develop a better voice, one with sophistication and charm, so your influence never wavers_ , she tells another, who thrust her fingers inside her, watching the witch’s face remain cold and expressionless. _Do not worry about what is said or unsaid, because the man you love will be the beginning and end of all that is said_ , the witch tells the last woman, as she dips her head lower into the sheets, her hands tied, the witch securing the woman's head, so her tongue can continue twisting, twirling, assailing the centre of her.

Despite these acts, the witch keeps her boundaries. She never asks for anything these women are unwilling to give, nothing they do not explicitly ask to be shown how to do. Nevertheless, the witch feels something within herself harden over the years, as she would drink in their lost cries from their lips.

And when she rests her head, their words rush from her ears. They flood her bed in a wave as dark and marred as ink, a permanent stain.

It is the way in which humans wish to be, she decides: to be seen, to be heard so deeply, but never to carry the pain nor the ecstasies of witnessing their observer.

When the women go back to their worlds, they shrink like violets at the turn of autumn; they dissipate like petals to the sweated palm. This world and time in which they lived made them bodiless, voiceless, formless. And still, they left her gifts in heaps: flowers, perfumes, liquors, rare trinkets of great beauty. And the witch, increasingly over the years, felt more and more alone. For what she had always wanted was never to shrink, to never lose her voice or form. What she wanted, what she wished for most of all was her freedom. And that made her leave her old world behind for this life, this life of loneliness.

For here, in this cave, miles from life and the world, was her vocation of solitude, the role of realising the desires of others.

By definition, the witch was supposed by others to be many things, but never a creature of desire.

Yet here she was, wanting, aching; worst of all, the witch found herself wishing.

The witch can watch her, Bernie, in the pool of the lagoon.

The prince's arms hold Bernie’s above her head. She is thrust into the headboard. He finishes off. He sleeps.

His hand is a dead weight on her breasts.

The witch touches the reflective pool of the lagoon with a trembling hand. The image sifts away, lifeless, into the green waters.

 _Strange creature_ , Serena thinks. _The only one I met who had what she needed inside herself_.

It is the truth, after all—its strange, tenuous knowledge of when you betray yourself—that keeps you awake at night.

Never memory.

…

Months later, Bernie arrives to the sea cave for the second time.

She asks for something so simple, the witch almost betrays emotion at the request.

‘Can I-’ she asks, ‘have your company?’

‘My company?’

‘Yes,’ the Bernie asks. ‘May I stay the night?’

The witch raises an eyebrow.

‘No!’ Bernie corrects, sensing the witch’s misunderstanding. ‘Not at all like that.’

‘Then in what way?’ the witch asks.

‘I wish merely to speak with you,’ Bernie says, then, ‘to pass the time.’

‘Marital bliss?’ Serena asks.

‘You can call it that,’ she says.

The witch deliberates, then makes an offer. 'It is a rarity of the day, but I can help you find you a man of true heart and character, for a price.'

'No,' the Bernie says. She smiles and then sobers. 'I wish to spend the night in a different way. I—I wish to spend it with you.' 

‘That would be alright, I suppose,’ the witch agrees, hesitantly. ‘But all wishes are for a price. And for tonight, I suspect I will know what price you will pay as the night unfolds.’

When Bernie agrees, they proceed to spend the evening in each other’s company. To the witch’s surprise, there flows a sense of great comfort, a familiarity between the two of them. Serena makes Bernie a meal, and not to any of the witch’s surprise, she gobbles it up, whole. 

‘Hungry?’ the witch asks.

‘Starving,’ Bernie says. ‘He tells me to watch my figure.’

Serena closes her eyes at the admission, breathes out.

'What else does he tell you to do?' the witch asks.

Bernie does not answer, but instead, she turns out the lamp, lights a candle.

...

When the moon is full and heavy in the sky, they go to bed together, and the witch takes up a bottle of wine. She passes it to Bernie, watches wearily as she drinks it, in thirsty swigs.

‘You never ask for anything,’ Bernie says, the wine blurring the edge of her consciousness. ‘Besides payment.’

‘I do not want anything,’ the witch replies. 

‘Bullocks!’ Bernie props up her body on the bed, body humming with alcohol, the false boldness it brings. ‘Witches must want things. We creatures are twists of nature, yet are natural things.’

The witch cannot reply, for Bernie lowers herself into the bed, her head falling onto the pillow. Serena wonders if a short strand of her hair will meet the others that rest in that graveyard of the counseled and lovers, when realizes she is staring back at her in the darkness.

‘Since I met you, I…I cannot stop thinking of you,’ Bernie says. 

Serena smiles, a bit sadly at the admission. ‘You’re drunk.’

‘Am not,’ Bernie says, waving a finger in unsteady circles, eyes narrowing.

The witch nods her head. ‘Go to bed, Bernie.’

‘No,’ she says, grabbing the witch’s arm, ‘I think…I think I know what you wish for tonight.’

Serena can almost taste her, her red wine, on her lips.

Bernie, to the witch’s protest, takes further hold of her arms. But she is stronger than the witch, and brings her down on the bed, straddles the witch’s hips as she slowly pulls her body underneath her own. Bernie’s hands reach, downwards, to the witch’s face, tracing at her lines and scars, gently. Bernie’s thumb trails across her face, until it rests at her lips. 

’You wish for control,’ Bernie whispers. 'But not for the wrong reasons.'

Bernie watches as the witch's face darkens beneath her own. 

' _Bernie_ ,' the witch warns. 

'You wish,' Bernie says, 'to choose.'

'Bernie, please,' the witch warns a second time.

'What is wrong with wishing?' Bernie asks.

‘All gifts,’ the witch replies, trying to extricate Bernie from her, ‘ _must_ be freely given.’

'Stop thinking,' Bernie says, pinning her down.

She clings to her, kisses the witch.

Then wordlessly, she leaves.

…

It is not long until Bernie comes to the sea cave for the third time. The witch is the one to greet her, she steps out from behind her stone. Her arms rest across her chest, no longer knowing where they stand, what this charade between them was becoming.

‘You have what you wanted,’ the witch says.

‘I’m sorry,’ Bernie mutters. 'The last time I was here—I shouldn’t have. I won’t repeat that mistake.’

‘Mistake?’

'No, Serena. I—'

‘Let me guess: the prince. Is he unhappy?’

Bernie nods. ‘I need you—'

‘If you need guidance about what to do in the marriage bed,’ the witch says, ‘we don't need to keep meeting up like this.’

‘That’s not—‘

The witch smiles her shipwreck smile, leans in to her ear. ‘I am told—by men and women alike—that I am quite the _thorough_ instructor on matters of the marriage bed.’

‘You aren’t possibly insinuating—to solve my problems I should,’ Bernie's eyes widen, ‘with _you._ ’

The sea witch raises a single, thin eyebrow. ‘The sea nettles aren’t the only things getting crusty down here.’

Bernie casts her a disapproving look. ‘I’m not of your…persuasion.’

Serena places a hand on her hip. ‘Not like I haven’t heard that from the women in my bed before.’

And with those words, Bernie is laughing. The witch realises she never heard her laugh before, and she is shocked by the sound of it. It is great, honking thing. And the sea witch finds herself, despite her better nature, she is laughing, too.

‘Good thing I am worldly,’ Bernie says, after a time, wiping the tears from her eyes. ‘If not, I’d be rather scandalized by your so-called “instructions.”’

‘My instruction offers confidence,’ the witch says, simply. ‘Confidence is an element of nature. The world invents the rest.’

‘Perhaps,’ Bernie agrees. And then, more quietly, adds, ‘But perhaps you should—should worry about the world and its rules, that is.’

‘Do you wish to be of the world?’ the witch asks her.

‘What choice is there,’ the mermaid says, ‘to be anything but of the world.’

The sea witch's heart, an ancient thing, fails in her chest.

‘So,’ she says, ‘what is it you want?’

Bernie mulls it over. ‘I wish to be a good wife.’

‘And what, may I ask, makes a good wife?’

Bernie’s reply is faint, barely audible. ‘A good wife desires her husband in bed.'

The witch’s breath, when it comes, hisses through her teeth. ‘To make you a good wife, and to make you a good wife for your husband, are two different things. I want you to understand that before I do what I must do.’

'I understand.' Bernie says. ‘What will it require?’

Serena makes sure she is looking at her. ‘It will require your voice, Bernie.’

‘My voice?’ she asks. ‘What could you possibly want with my voice?’

‘It is not what I want.’ Serena says, and this time, it's true. ‘It’s what this wish requires.’

‘He…’ she says, eyes brimming with realisation, ‘does not want me to have a voice?’

‘No,’ the witch replies. ‘He does not.’

As Bernie looks down, tears begin to form in her eyes.

When she cries, Bernie’s sob is low and hollow. The witch comes to her side, and then against her better judgement, holds her. As Bernie begins to fall on her unsteady legs, the witch grabs at her shoulders, allows Bernie’s head fall into the crook of her neck.

‘I’ve always wanted to be dutiful,’ she whispers fiercely. ‘To be _natural_.’

The witch feels her throat tighten.

‘You are natural,’ the witch says. ‘You are as natural as the sea to a storm, as the stars to the sky, as the nightingale’s song to the end of a summer’s day.’

‘Tell that to the kingdom.’ Bernie retorts. ‘Tell that to the kingdom of the land and of the sea. I am anything _but_ natural.’

Serena takes Bernie’s face in her hands. ‘What is in your heart?’

Bernie tears herself from the witch’s grasp. ‘You get back!’

The witch holds her tighter, her dark eyes piercing Bernie’s.

‘Look at _me_ ,’ the witch demands.

‘Nothing!’ Bernie shouts, hands taking in fists of her own short hair. ‘Stop asking me, please, for there is nothing left!’

And as Bernie tears from her grasp, the witch knows she has finally told the truth. So the witch pushes no further, she knows she must surrender to her last wish.

'I must take your voice,' Serena says. 'It must come, willingly, from your mouth.'

‘How will you take it?’

‘There are multiple ways. But I will do what is most comfortable for you.’

‘It’s strange,’ Bernie says. ‘But I think I know one of the ways. And I think it is the way I choose to give it.’

Serena eyes her, sceptically. ‘You understand?’

‘Yes,’ Bernie assures her. The witch takes a step back, but Bernie extends a hand. ‘I believe this time, you must be the one to close your eyes.’

The witch obeys, her rabbit’s heart hammering deep inside her chest, because she must obey Bernie’s wish. Because this time, she is selfish and she wants to. She feels herself being led to her bed.

‘Lie down for me,’ Bernie instructs. The witch hesitates, her hand blindly reaching for the headboard. 'Trust me,’ Bernie whispers.

The witch nods and is laid down on the bed. Bernie climbs over her, and as she does, Serena feels Bernie’s legs coming down, straddling her hips.

‘It’s strange,’ Bernie says, above the witch, marveling at her body beneath her. ‘With you, there is no question of what to do.’

Serena lets out a coarse, strained laugh. ‘I didn’t even give instruction.’

‘I doubt you need to,’ Bernie says, softly. ‘You looking like this.’

‘And how,’ Serena asks, shifting underneath her, ‘do I look?’

Bernie appraises her, the witch’s black eyes are still closed, so she lowers her mouth to her ear. Her hand travels up the witch's leg, slowly tracing up her skirts, smiling as she reaches her garter belt.

‘Wanting,’ Bernie whispers. She reaches, higher. ‘Wishing.’

Bernie begins to remove the belts, using her teeth, her mouth.

And at the hoarse sound of Bernie's breath, the witch's breath hitches in her throat. When Bernie's hand travels up her leg, the witch smiles as Bernie's expression changes to one of delight, as she feels the witch's stockings, held up with a garter belt.

Bernie mouth follows the pattern of the stockings, her mouth leaving a trail of wetness as the garter belt and stockings are removed. The witch feels a dampness flush between her legs. 

‘I need to know,’ Bernie asks. ‘In the marriage bed, would I do this?’

Her hands travel below the witch’s undergarments, sliding over the folds of her centre, moving in a steady, circular movement, before she slowly begins to take her, her finger curling inside her.

The witch breathes out.

'Or this?' Bernie slips another finger inside her heat, as her lips come to witch's neck. She plants a searing kiss. Twists her two fingers upwards.

' _I—_ ' the witch gasps. 

'I could never do that to him,' Bernie says, her kisses traveling ever closer to the witch's mouth. 'But with you, I—'

She curls her fingers again. The witch cries out, her eyes fly open. Bernie kisses her then, deep and full, on the mouth. The witch reaches for Bernie’s shoulders, holds her, moans into her chest, her teeth coming to Bernie's breasts. She bites down, Bernie hisses and laughs as her hand find the back of the witch’s short, dark hair. She pulls. The witch's head falls back, in pain and surprise. Bernie brings her lips to hers, again, steadily thrusting her fingers into the witch’s heat. She ruts against her, twists her fingers, until the witch’s mouth hangs wide open, a stunned ‘O.’

‘Then what would I do?’ Bernie asks, pausing, teasing.

The witch, her hair trapped in Bernie's fist, is lost in the movement, the sensations. She can only let out a murmured sign of pain and pleasure.

‘What did you say?’

_‘Please.'_

And with one word, the witch wishes, she submits.

Bernie takes one hand, grabs the witch’s hands and raises them above her head, kissing her neck, leaving the witch wanting, her chest and sex exposed, aching. She moves her pelvis up, into Bernie’s fingers, taking her in, fully.

‘I—’ Bernie begins falling apart at the sight of the witch, unravelling beneath her.

Bernie’s breath is ragged, rough. She pushes above the witch's body, her fingers entering and curling, her body thrusting. When it is not enough for the witch, Bernie's head clambers between her legs, her tongue leaving a trail of heat down her thigh, until she reaches the place. The witch moans as she watches Bernie close her eyes, flatten her tongue. Bernie runs it over the length of her, again and again, until she thrusts it into her centre. The witch's hands grasp at Bernie's hair as her tongue moves in and out of the centre of her, until she adds her fingers, until the witch is driven apart, and she flows into her mouth, her loud cries reverberating against the cave walls.

They breathe into each other’s mouths, then the witch pulls Bernie beneath her, grabs her hair in her hands. Clothes are shed. Their bodies come together, skin to illuminated skin.

‘You’re beautiful,’ Bernie whispers, staring up at her.

Serena’s breath is ragged, flowing into the neck of the woman below her. 

‘You’re beautiful,’ Bernie whispers again.

The witch’s kisses begin at Bernie's mouth, then wander lower, until her mouth reaches her centre.

It is when Bernie cries out, the witch knows it is time.

‘Open your mouth,’ Bernie whispers, their bodies twisting. ‘My voice, it is yours now.’

…

When they wake, Bernie cannot say goodbye. 

The witch helps her dress, and in the daylight, she sees bruises on Bernie’s arms, her back, marks she did not leave.

‘The prince?’ the witch asks. ‘Did he do this?’

Bernie says nothing, for she cannot speak. And even if she could, in the kingdom of the land, they did not speak of such things. 

It is because of this, she kisses the witch, then leaves.

…

Days later, the sea bird swoops in. He brings the witch news. News of the prince and his wife. Three words on parchment.

_She is dead._

That night, the witch releases a tempest upon the village. One they had not seen in hundred a year.

At the news, the witch is nothing, but a dead thing. She tears at the hair of her scalp, until the roots flush white-hot, until she screams out into the raging storm of the night.

It is in the night she gains strength. And when she does, she brings up her dagger.

She can feel it, a flash of memory of her life before, that foreboding hope followed by this strange, pervasive numbness.

Knife in hand, she has one last desire as she leaves for the village below: human flesh.

...

What Serena hears, at first, is the sound of a man’s voice coming from below a ship’s deck. With her dagger she makes her way down the flooded steps, to the cabin door. She finds that the door is locked, but with a steady kick at the bolt, it creaks open.

Bernie is lying on a bed, staring upwards.

Her eyes are no longer living, but are two glass marbles, their focus heaven-bent. Serena rushes to the lifeless woman, brings her up, and into her arms.

‘Bernie,’ she whispers, trying desperately to find a pulse on her wrist, then on her neck. ‘Bernie, please—’

‘You missed your chance, you old witch,’ a voice says. ‘She drove a dagger through her own heart.’

The sea witch knows, even with her back turned, that the prince speaks these words. It is the prince who towers behind her.

‘I told her I had you killed,’ the prince continues. ‘Now look at what she’s done to herself.’

To her horror, she lifts Bernie’s garment to find the gaping wound of a knife, to know that what the prince tells her must be true. A sob, deep and guttural, courses through her. She stoops, kisses Bernie’s greying lips, and then does so again, and again, and again, until she knows that the body she kisses is that of a corpse.

‘Unnatural,’ the prince says. And at that word so vile, a word Bernie herself had used, the witch’s attention is drawn to the prince’s shadow. Behind her, he holds her dagger she dropped. She feels it begin to tear into her shoulder, as the prince slides the edge of it against her back.

‘She used to talk about you,’ he continues, knife floating lazily across her back. ‘How she would visit the town witch. She said a peculiar thing, one night to me, in bed. She said you were beautiful.’

Serena's eyes sear shut at the word, at the memory it evoked. Of their bodies, tangled together. But the recollection does not last long, for the prince reaches out and grabs the witch’s hair. He gives it a sharp wrench, exposing her long, pale neck to the blade of the dagger. As the prince held the dagger to her throat, Serena remembers Bernie, the last promise she gave her.

 _‘Open your mouth'_ she had told her. _'My voice, it is yours now.’_

‘I loved her,' the witch confesses. 

The prince withdraws his dagger, perplexed.

‘I loved her,’ Serena says, again. 

At those words, Serena knows what awaits her.

The prince thrusts the hilt of the dagger into her side.

He twists and tears at the flesh of the witch's side, until she chokes, until he pulls the dagger out.

But when he does, instead of blood, black feathers begin to pour from the witch’s abdomen.

Serena smiles, weakly.

The prince watches in horror when out from her gaping wound springs black feathers, and then, birds. Great, winged birds of prey. They soar over the prince’s head as he cries out, drops the dagger. The witch picks it up and stands over him on the ground.

‘We are twists of nature,’ Serena says, 'yet natural things.’

And with a single thrust, she buries the dagger into the prince’s chest.

He falls, dead and glassy-eyed, onto the floor.

Serena only takes a moment to acknowledge what she had done. She hastily wipes his blood off her hands, and onto the bed sheets, then she quickly takes up the prince's corpse. With the birds of prey, she drags it up the stairs, onto the deck. Once there, she hoists it over the rail, and releases it into the heaving sea.

She watches as the waves take the body, as it bobs underneath the waves, and then comes back to the surface. She watches as the birds lash at the corpse’s face. She is about to make her way back down the cabin, to where Bernie’s body rests, but before she can, she feels the presence of someone else. She hears someone calling her name. The figure is clutching a dagger. She drags her body by her elbows, makes her way across the ship deck.

She possesses a bright, incandescent fin.

‘Serena,’ the figure calls out. ‘I, uh-’ she stares down at her fish’s tail, ‘would appreciate your help.’

The witch, barely believing her eyes, scrambles to her feet. 'But you— _you're_ —'

'Dead?’ the mermaid offers.

'Well,' Serena says, eyes unblinking. 'Yes.'

'What you saw in that cabin,' Bernie says, reaching out for Serena's hand. 'Was a mirage fashioned after myself, my own image. I needed the prince believe I was dead, so I could leave. So I could come to you, Serena. I wanted to come back to you.’

The witch tries, and fails, to steady her breathing. ‘You wanted—’

‘Yes,’ Bernie says, eyes brimming. 'I want to come back to you.'

The witch carefully mulls it all over, then knowingly, she pulls the mermaid’s arms over her shoulders.

‘Why am I transformed back?’ Bernie asks. Serena continues to drag her, tries to get the mermaid near the water she desperately needs.

‘Must have been the—’ then she stops.

There is silence. Bernie asks what she seems to already know.

‘You killed him?’

‘I did,’ the witch confesses.

Bernie clings to the witch, lets out a cry of relief.

Something, Serena thinks, must have happened with the dagger, its magic must have transformed Bernie back into a mermaid, her previous form. But she could not ponder these things too long, for Bernie was already fading from her.

‘Need,’ the mermaid gasps, ‘water.’

‘I know,’ the witch says. 'I know, darling.'

The witch drags her to the edge of the ship, and a great wave comes over the bow. Bernie lies under it, breathes it in as it crashes over them.

‘Serena,’ she says, voice hoarse and sluggish. The witch holds her. ‘I never thought that I would have my old body again. That I would ever meet someone like you, someone of my kind.’

‘I know,’ Serena whispers. 'Neither did I.'

The cling to one another, until Bernie’s breathing becomes laboured.

‘I must go,’ she says. ‘I don’t know what strange mercy brought me to you, but I do not have long to live on land.’

‘Yes, but—’ Serena says, ‘perhaps I could meet you in the land of the sea? That is, if I should follow.'

‘Yes.’ Bernie says decisively, running a hand against her cheek.

The witch smiles, caresses her face. ‘Then I will.’

‘But—’

‘But what?’

‘You will have to take the form of a mermaid. You can no longer be a witch. You can no longer live in your sea cave.’

'That’s fine,’ the witch says. 

‘And you have to be completely certain this is what you want, that I am what you want. For if it isn't, the sea will know, and you will drown.’

‘I won't drown,’ the witch says.

'You must be certain that if one day this is not what you want, that if I am not what you, we can give each other peace, or release to the arms of another.' 

'I know we would,' the witch says. 

When the mermaid offers no more words, only silence, the witch takes her hand.

'I believe you are impossibly daft sometimes,' the witch says.'There is nowhere on earth, no suffering nor form I would not take on for the joy that is being with you, your pleasure and your pain.’

Bernie smiles. ‘Well that’s settled then, isn’t it?’

…

It takes a moment, to get them both seated on the rails of the ship. As they stare down at the raging waters below, one last flicker of apprehension transpires across Bernie’s face.

No soon as the words can cross her lips does the witch bring her lips to hers. As they kiss, waves crash around them. The ship ascends and falls with the great arch of a wave. Their stomachs plummet. As Serena continues to grasp at Bernie, to pull her closer, she finds she can no longer hold onto the rail of the ship.

'I'm ready,' the witch breathes.

‘Then let go,’ Bernie whispers.

The witch lets go, and they plunge into the black waters.

The sea, a force as old and natural as the passing of time itself, accepts them both, her arms outstretched.


End file.
